View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Washington University St. Louis: Open Scholarship Washington University Jurisprudence Review Volume 4 | Issue 2 2012 The iM smeasurement of Legal Pragmatism Douglas Lind Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_jurisprudence Part of the Courts Commons, Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons, Judges Commons, Jurisprudence Commons, Law and Politics Commons, Legal History Commons, Legal Theory Commons, and the Rule of Law Commons Recommended Citation Douglas Lind, The Mismeasurement of Legal Pragmatism, 4 Wash. U. Jur. Rev. 213 (2012). Available at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_jurisprudence/vol4/iss2/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Law School at Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Washington University Jurisprudence Review by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Washington University Jurisprudence Review VOLUME 4 NUMBER 2 2012 THE MISMEASUREMENT OF LEGAL PRAGMATISM DOUGLAS LIND ―Pragmatism?!—is that all you have to offer?‖1 —Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead I. INTRODUCTION Legal pragmatism is much misunderstood. Critics vilify it as an ―amorphous,‖2 anti-theoretical3 and skeptical jurisprudence,4 one that Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho; Faculty Member, The National Judicial College; B.A. University of Minnesota, J.D. Washington University in St. Louis, Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania. Member of Missouri and Pennsylvania bars. 1. TOM STOPPARD, ROSENCRANTZ & GUILDENSTERN ARE DEAD 58 (Henry Popkin ed., 1967). 2. Richard H. Weisberg, It‟s a Positivist, It‟s a Pragmatist, It‟s a Codifier! Reflections on Nietzsche and Stendhal, 18 CARDOZO L. REV. 85, 85 (1996) (reproaching legal pragmatism for an ―amorphous nature‖). Accord Steven D. Smith, The Pursuit of Pragmatism, 100 YALE L.J. 409, 444 (1990) (dismissing pragmatism as ―either empty or innocuous‖); Mark Tushnet, Pragmatism and Judgment: A Comment on Lund, 99 NW. U. L. REV. 289, 290 (2004) (―[Pragmatism is] an all-purpose and almost meaningless label for quite traditional judicial decisions‖). 3. See, e.g., P. S. ATIYAH, PRAGMATISM AND THEORY IN ENGLISH LAW 5 (1987) (describing pragmatism as a ―general aversion to theory‖); Ronald J. Bacigal, Implied Hearsay: Defusing the Battle Line between Pragmatism and Theory, 11 S. ILL. U. L.J. 1127, 1144 (1987) (rejecting a pragmatic understanding of the hearsay rule as an anti-academic approach that sacrifices ―intellectual purity‖ and common sense while ―losing sight of the fundamental purpose of the hearsay rule‖); Smith, supra note 2, at 437 (―[H]ostility to abstract theory is a central feature in the pragmatic temperament.‖). 4. See RONALD DWORKIN, LAW‘S EMPIRE 95, 151, 160–61 (1986); Sotirios A. Barber, Stanley Fish and the Future of Pragmatism in Legal Theory, 58 U. CHI. L. REV. 1033, 1042 (1991); Murray J. Leaf, Pragmatic Legal Norms, in RENASCENT PRAGMATISM: STUDIES IN LAW AND SOCIAL SCIENCE 72, 73 (Alfonso Morales ed., 2003); Andrew J. Morris, Some Challenges for Legal Pragmatism: A Closer Look at Pragmatic Legal Reasoning, 28 N. ILL. U. L. REV. 1, 14–15 (2007); Dmitri N. Shalin, 213 Washington University Open Scholarship 214 WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY JURISPRUDENCE REVIEW [VOL. 4:213 languishes in indeterminacy,5 depreciates the distinctive structure of legal reasoning and decision-making,6 and commits a host of other jurisprudential sins.7 Even some of its advocates tend to see it as philosophically mushy and malleable, a jurisprudence shorn of theoretical rigidity, amenable to whatever ends and purposes they wish.8 To both friend and foe, legal pragmatism thus emerges as something less than ―real‖ jurisprudence. Like the sorry lackey of the Stoppardian Hamlet‘s court,9 serious legal scholars tend to treat pragmatism as a theoretical backwater, readily dismissed or manipulated at will. Among the most persistent criticisms of legal pragmatism is the claim that it represents nothing more than an opportunistic ―result-oriented‖ Legal Pragmatism, an Ideal Speech Situation, and the Fully Embodied Democratic Process, 5 NEV. L.J. 433, 446, 477 (2005). 5. E.g., Anthony E. Cook, The Death of God in American Pragmatism and Realism: Resurrecting the Value of Love in Contemporary Jurisprudence, 82 GEO. L.J. 1431, 1444, 1447–48, 1454 (1994); R. George Wright, Pragmatism and Freedom of Speech, 80 N.D. L. REV. 103, 104–05 (2004). Cf. Shalin asserts that that pragmatism entails a ―notion of emergent determinism which . suggests that our principles do not merely describe the world out there but also help usher it in,‖ such that for pragmatism ―‗[i]ndeterminacy‘ does not mean the paucity of terms as much as their overabundance.‖ Shalin, supra note 4, at 461. 6. See RONALD DWORKIN, JUSTICE IN ROBES 21–24, 36–48 (2006); LAW‘S EMPIRE, supra note 4, at 151–64; BRIAN Z. TAMANAHA, LAW AS A MEANS TO AN END: THREAT TO THE RULE OF LAW 129–30 (2006); Morgan Cloud, Pragmatism, Positivism, and Principles in Fourth Amendment Theory, 41 UCLA L. REV. 199, 219–21 (1993); Morris, supra note 4, at 1–5. 7. See, e.g., Cloud, supra note 6, at 201–08, 301–02 (arguing that pragmatist judicial reasoning in Fourth Amendment jurisprudence has created unprincipled, illogical, and theoretically incoherent cases that have diminished the scope of individual liberty while enhancing government power); Cook, supra note 5, at 1432, 1443, 1449, 1453, 1457–58 (charging pragmatism, especially as espoused by John Dewey, with having bankrupted American jurisprudence by ―dethroning‖ God and replacing normative discourse grounded in religious faith with ―raw faith in ‗the power of intelligence,‘‖ the experimental method of science, and a ―blind‖ commitment to a ―radical [and dangerous] democratic culture‖); Weisberg, supra note 2, at 86–87 (expressing alarm toward legal pragmatism as an ―intensely ‗problematic,‘‖ overly conservative method that is ―harmful to contemporary legal thought and practice‖); Wright, supra note 5, at 104 (―Pragmatist doctrines ultimately tend to drain the life from our most adequate and circumstantially appropriate moral vocabularies and . in free speech adjudication ultimately leads to a normatively flattened free speech law‖). Compare Cook, supra note 5, at 1447 (―[John Dewey] would consider it ridiculous to reduce constitutional meaning . [to] the intention of the Framers. .‖) with Steven Knapp, Practice, Purpose, and Interpretive Controversy, in PRAGMATISM IN LAW AND SOCIETY, 323, 323 (Michael Brint & William Weaver eds., 1991) ( ―[A] ‗pragmatist‘ account of interpretive controversy . [that treats] the meaning of any text . [as] what the text‘s author or authors intended it to mean.‖). 8. See, e.g., John O. McGinnis & Michael B. Rappaport, A Pragmatic Defense of Originalism, 31 HARV. J.L. & PUB. POL‘Y 917, 919, 935 (2008) (arguing that originalism in constitutional interpretation is defensible on pragmatic grounds since it can lead to ―good consequences‖); Daria Roithmayr, “Easy for You to Say”: An Essay on Outsiders, the Usefulness of Reason, and Radical Pragmatism, 57 U. MIAMI L. REV. 939, 953–54 (2003) (advocating a way of thinking about law labeled ―radical pragmatism,‖ defined as a ―protean, unobjective, and unanchored . ad-hoc and improvisational approach‖ that could be useful for the ―disempowered community‖). 9. See STOPPARD, supra note 1, at 58. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/law_jurisprudence/vol4/iss2/1 2012] THE MISMEASUREMENT OF LEGAL PRAGMATISM 215 standpoint. David Luban, for example, asserts that ―legal pragmatism is result-oriented or instrumental. Its focus is the well-being of the community, not the purity or integrity of legal doctrine.‖10 To Luban, legal pragmatism allows for almost anything in judicial decision-making, so long as the outcome appears directed to the good of the community. Thus, while he acknowledges that legal pragmatists typically favor adherence to precedent, Luban chides them for doing so not based on principle, but only because doing so is ―instrumentally important.‖11 Whether it be the doctrine of precedent in general or some specific doctrinal rule, Luban avers that pragmatism recognizes no principled commitment to consistency or coherence in legal decision. ―Pragmatists . see no inherent virtue in logical consistency if it leads to unacceptable outcomes,‖ he writes.12 Rather, ―what pragmatists seek in legal reasoning is not logical neatness but persuasion in the service of reasonable outcomes.‖13 In similar fashion, Ronald Dworkin characterizes pragmatism as sanctioning an approach to adjudication that ―holds that judges should always decide the cases before them in a forward-looking, consequentialist style.‖14 Dworkin agrees with Luban that pragmatism recognizes no principled constraints on judicial freedom. By his understanding, pragmatism admits that judges, at their discretion and for reasons of expediency, may adhere to precedent. It even allows that instrumental considerations generally lead them that way.15 But Dworkin claims that pragmatism does not compel judges to follow precedent (or even abide by legislative judgment) as a matter of principle.16 He accordingly sees pragmatism as a worrisome interpretive conception of law that sacrifices principle and integrity for whatever outcomes would seem to be ―best for the future without concern for the past.‖17 To Dworkin, that is, legal pragmatism offers nothing but a directive to judges to ―make whatever decisions seem to them best for the community‘s future, not counting any form of consistency with the past as valuable for its own sake.‖18 10. David Luban, What‟s Pragmatic About Legal Pragmatism? 18 CARDOZO L. REV. 43, 43 (1996) (emphasis added). 11. See id. (―Pragmatists nevertheless recognize that conforming to inherited legal doctrine and attending to history may be good for the community, so doctrinal integrity remains instrumentally important.‖). 12. Id. at 45. 13. Id. 14. DWORKIN, JUSTICE IN ROBES, supra note 6, at 21. 15. See id. at 21–22. 16. See id.